Partial Nuclear Meltdown in Japan

There’s been a partial meltdown at one of the nuclear reactors struck by the earthquake in Japan. Apparently, a little radiation leaked into the atmosphere is not to be construed as critical, just worrisome… WTF???

It’s really a stunning disaster that I can only stress again should be serious food for thought here in the United States, where we have nuclear power plants built along fault lines. Here’s the latest news on what’s being done to prevent a complete nuclear meltdown:

Japanese officials took the extraordinary step on Saturday of flooding a crippled nuclear reactor with seawater in a last-ditch effort to avoid a nuclear meltdown, as the nation grappled simultaneously with its worst nuclear mishap and the aftermath of its largest recorded earthquake.

The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station had both a radiation leak and an explosion on Saturday which “prompted the government to expand an evacuation order to affect 170,000 people in the plant’s vicinity.”

This is just horrifying…

The Japanese Nuclear and Industrial safety agency said as many as 160 people may have been exposed to radiation around the plant, and Japanese news media said three workers at the facility were suffering from full-on radiation sickness.

Even if Japan manages to avoid large, uncontrolled releases of radiation that would result from a meltdown, the problems at the Fukushima facility already amounted to the worst nuclear accident in Japan’s history and perhaps the biggest malfunction at a nuclear plant since the Chernobyl disaster 25 years ago, the worst ever.

The good news is the nuclear plant flooded with sea water today is no doubt history:

The decision to flood the reactor core with seawater, experts said, was an indication that Tokyo Electric and Japanese authorities had probably decided to scrap the plant, because the salt water would corrode its delicate metal innards. “This plant is almost 40 years old, and now it’s over for that place,” Olli Heinonen, the former chief inspector for the I.A.E.A., and now a visiting scholar at Harvard, said on Saturday.

It’s time to kiss the nuclear power industry goodbye… It’s long overdue. Let Congress know — NO MORE NUKES.

Meanwhile the death toll is rising in Japan as the rush is on to save survivors of the quake and tsunami.

About Pamela Leavey

Pamela Leavey is the Editor in Chief, Owner/Publisher of The Democratic Daily as well as a freelance writer and photographer. Pamela holds a certificate in Contemporary Communications from UMass Lowell, a Journalism Certificate from UMass Amherst and a B.A. in Creative Writing and Digital Age Communications from UMass Amherst UWW.

2 Responses to Partial Nuclear Meltdown in Japan

The explosion is a very very bad sign. They are claiming that they don’t know if the the reactor core has been damaged. That unfortunat¬ely isn’t a true statement they know perfectly well it has been breached. They have announced elevated levels of Cesium in the air. They are talking about \radiation leakage\. That is misleading¬,Cesium 135 and 137 are isotopes that are byproducts of the fission reactor using Uranium 235 a a primary fuel. Cesium isotopes can only come from the reactor core which means it has been breached. In a best case they are deliberate¬ly venting the reactor vessel to try and keep the amping control rods from collapsing.

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